Because of today’s environment, companies in Abilene count on the web. Reliable access to the internet is the lifeblood of their company. All companies, big and small, need fast and reliable access to The net.
We’ll become increasingly reliant on access to The net as the months and years progress.
The use of the web is pervasive. We use it for email and data sharing, video conferencing and VOIP, archiving and commerce. What can best meet your needs? Is a cable modem sufficient? Metro Ethernet may be what you need. Would Gigabit Internet suffice? What is best for your organization in Abilene, Texas? Will your company needs be met with a 50 Meg circuit, a 5 Meg circuit, 10 Meg Internet access or 100 Meg Internet access point?
Before selecting the appropriate service, your business must assess its needs. Will web surfing and email be your primary use of the net? Will real-time data connection with servers in the cloud be the primary use of the net? Are you hosting data in Abilene, Texas? Do remote sites depend upon you?
What happens if you have an outage in your high-speed Internet? Can your organization afford the downtime? Is uptime essential? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.
High-speed access to the net is something all companies need. Before you choose your broadband, look at the costs and benefits. Performing this analysis is an important step in picking the right one for your company. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:
… the actual issue is knowing what technology and capability can satisfy your needs.
For most companies in Abilene, Texas, some or all of the employees need access to the web. Whether it is for organization research, to order supplies or to use third-party applications, the web is required.
The number of workers you have may be the factor that drives your decision. A 5 or 10 megabyte Internet circuit may be perfect if you only have a few employees. If you have more than that, you may need more.
Perhaps most workers at your company use an intranet system with limited features. High- speed Internet may not be a priority in this case. When they are frequently downloading things, whether documents, graphics or videos, however, speed is necessary for efficient job performance.
Are you regularly performing backups? Synchronizing your backup data after doing remote backups from every desk requires you to support simultaneous connections out to the web.
Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? As a file is saved, it is pushed to the cloud and then synced back to other people’s computers. Enough bandwidth is required to support this function along with every other service.
Your business location may cause you to think about high-speed business Internet access such as Metro Ethernet and/or gigabit Internet. Usually, you can find these in “lit buildings” in Abilene that have been previously wired by a carrier. The ease and affordability of adding high-speed Internet to your office may surprise you.
While it may be the case that bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building can cause a big dent in your wallet, bringing the connection to a suite or offices within that building does not have to. Also, securing high-speed Internet access using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.
Does your company host its own servers running websites, APIs or data feeds for other offices or companies outside of your own four walls? Do your headquarters have a hosted Internet application that must be accessed regularly by 40 or 50 branch offices? Is your business retail? Do you have thousands of stores? Do you host the point of sale system for the entire chain? Are you a law firm hosting data for multiple office locations?
Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. Those people are not able to do their work if the internet connection fails or is unreliable. If you need multiple connections to function at the same time from many different places, make sure that your intranet solution can reliably support it.
A cable modem or fairly cheap 10-megabyte circuit may be enough in certain scenarios. For example, these may meet the needs of a single office surfing the web. Metro Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet or other high-speed dedicated circuits is advisable for the headquarters where high-speed access to The net is important. While fast access to The net is and important, they must also have the capability to handle assorted simultaneous connections. A cable modem would not be able to accomplish this.
In some situations, there is a high price to pay for bringing in an inexpensive circuit or cable modem. Your low monthly bill may mean that the bandwidth is shared among multiple tenants. If you subscribe to a cable modem with a 30-megabyte connection, you would expect to always be able to reach that high speed. However, it is possible that during peak hours, you won’t. Only a certain amount of bandwidth may be available in a community. Many cable companies have limits on the amount they can deliver. That amount of bandwidth must be shared with different buildings and with the tenants housed within. You might be capped at 30-megabyte speed, but may never be able to actually reach that speed during the important hours of your organization day. Is it a problem if you get a quarter or even half of the speed you expected?
You can find a carrier who can provide dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth. In this case, your business receives full allocation of bandwidth. There is no sharing with any outsiders. Regardless of other tenants in your building or neighboring buildings, you should receive the full capacity of your circuit.
Metro Ethernet provides guaranteed bandwidth in increments as follows: 5, 10, 50 and 100 Meg circuits. You can reach gigabit speeds with gigabit Internet providers.
In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.
The truth is that circuits can go down in Abilene, Texas even though some providers offer superior Internet bandwidth products. How can you lower the chances that you will experience some kind of outage?
Redundant circuits.
There are two types of redundancy to consider.
With the first type of redundancy, you receive multiple circuits from the same carrier. Redundant circuits can help protect against certain problems. They can mitigate the inconveniences when there is a failure of a physical line or a problem with the port into your router. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. There is some protection that comes with this but there is risk as well.
Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct carriers. Advanced routers and IP address allocations can be utilized to make it look to your users and the public that you have a single circuit. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. While circuit redundancy in general is a good idea, diversity redundancy by using different carriers, offers far better protection. Should one carrier have some trouble that extends to a greater area and is out of your control, you are backed up with a different carrier.
When considering redundant circuits and providers, try to be sure that the carriers you look at in Abilene have different physical geographic routes or pathways. Doing so will maximize redundancy. This means that you should try to have the circuits come into you building from different sides. The circuits would be attached to telephone poles (or underground conduits) in different directions leading to different data centers or central offices. What if there is some kind of catastrophic incident such as a fire or accident that impacts circuits within a region? Now, you have redundancy in an alternative physical direction.
It is true that Internet access costs you money. However, the cost does not come close to what you will pay if the access that is not reliable. Consider the following:
If your organization utilizes a cable modem, consider whether your carrier is providing circuits for multiple other tenants within the building. It is possible that during normal company hours, those tenants might be downloading large files or watching continuous videos. They might be getting a lot of phone calls. As they use more bandwidth, there is less for available for your needs. What happens to your phone calls? What about phone call quality? Maybe calls will randomly drop? Will your voice be inaudible? Will you have difficulty hearing the other end?
Regardless of whether you are part of a legal practice and your firm does file sharing, or an accounting practice sharing databases, your office is the central point or hub of your business. Every single one of your offices, stores and locations rely on you and your primary Internet connection to retrieve data. What if your circuit fails? Would it cause mere annoyance or utter disaster? Can your satellite offices perform any work at all? Process or take new orders? Dispense and receive data? Before choosing a solution, be sure to assess and really understand what your company requires. What if you are a software company? Perhaps you are running a hosted solution and it must be used by multiple customers; maybe even hundreds. You operate a service that utilizes API in order to grant access to other systems. They may use this to collect whatever data you are offering such as commodity prices, weather data or freight calculations. What if you have server problems and they are unable to connect to you? If you have repeated outages, how long will they remain a customer?
Is the net integral to the proper function of your organization? Do you rely on it entirely? Should your circuits go down, your representatives cannot make outbound calls. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Basically, you are out of company. Is redundancy enough? Are your carriers sufficiently reliable? Are you getting quality service so that your calls are clear and consistent?
It should be clear by now that you have many different options to select from. The needs and budget of your business will both affect your choices. To summarize:
Sometimes redundancy is not vital to you. For example, If you are a small company, with just one office location, a single Internet access circuit may be sufficient. You may get by with one 50, 10 or even 5 megabyte circuit. You may find that if your building is “lit”, gigabit service and Metro Ethernet service may be reasonably cost-effective choices for you. Because prices can vary based on the location of your organization and the availability of circuits, speak with our engineers to learn your options.
Mid sized companies with a single office in Abilene, need higher speed Internet access. Higher-speed circuits like Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet or others may be your best options. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. Using one 100-megabyte circuit instead of two 50-megabyte circuits, is one example. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Speaking with one of our experts will help you determine the options available in your specific location.
If your organization has several locations or offices, you are at great risk for failure. Redundant circuits are essential. It is helpful if they use multiple providers. Redundant routers, switches and other equipment can also be helpful to lessen downtime during a problem. Here too, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The correct combination of providers and services can keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.
If you can place yourself in this category, it is essential that you have Metro Ethernet, point-to-point circuits and gigabit Internet circuits. You absolutely need redundant circuits from different providers as well as redundant hardware. This is vital to ensuring uptime. You need to provide sufficient bandwidth to handle usage spikes without slowdowns or interruptions. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.
Your business faces great risk of less than adequate bandwidth and failing circuits. The circuit or circuits you have must stay within the parameters of your budget while still meeting your company needs. There is tremendous pressure on you to choose the best combination of circuits and hardware.
Our expert engineers will review your requirements and needs and create a free action plan for you. We are going to formulate a design or plan based partly on your current usage and demand levels. We will create something cost effective that gives you the resources your business needs, while keeping it running smoothly.
Please complete the contact form by clicking here. You may also call our office to set up an appointment for your assessment. We do assessments quickly. It can take as little as 48 hours to complete your analysis.